that the best course I could adopt, both for your peace and that of all your family, would have been to depart, and go far, far away from you; since to have been near, and not approach you, would have been for me impossible. You have, however, decided that I am to return to Ravenna; I shall accordingly return, and shall do and be all that you wish. I cannot say more."-Nor was it possible to say this in a more true and touching tone. There is, indeed, a kind of quiet, tender, and melancholy plaintiveness in the short address I have quoted, which sinks into the heart, and tells us how its writer did not expect happiness in the destiny that he pursued, and had endured misery in struggling against it; and so in the subsequent pages of his connection with this beloved lady, there seems a softness and a resignation in his character-a sort of delivering himself up to fate, which in no other time or circumstance of his life was ever apparent. At Ravenna, this time, he staid a considerable period, and seemed every day to contract a fonder attachment for the deep woods and dismantled quietude of the place. Here he composed Marino Faliero, Sardanapalus, the Foscari, Cain, the Prophecy of Dante, Translation from Pulci, and the third and fourth cantos of Don Juan. In the summer of 1820, Countess Guiccioli was separated from her husband, not at his, the husband's suit, which may seem extraordinary, but at her own. This separation, however, did originate or at least had the appearance of being caused by the Count's jealousy; although a separation had been a few years before granted at Rome on the solicitation of the Countess, from the same cause, and it was only after repeated protestations of a change of conduct on the part of her husband that she consented to return to him at Venice. Notwithstanding this, however, he now began most unconscionably to murmur, and insisted that the Countess should not receive Byron in her apartments, although he resided in the palace;-a sufficient cause for which he described himself to have been the scandalous or scandalized eye-witness of. The whole society of Ravenna, shocked at his indelicacy, rose up against him; the most indulgent said that, after having submitted so long, it was too bad at last to protest; while the young lady's relations considered her so shamefully ill-used, that they insisted upon and procured a separation; the conditions being-1st, that the Countess should reside with her father; 2nd, that her husband should provide her maintenance. She went then to reside with Count Gamba, at the distance of about fifteen miles from Ravenna, where Lord Byron visited her once or twice a-month, passing the rest of his time in perfect solitude. Italy was now in the fiery and fretful state of her own volcanos; and for a time it was allowed to persons, even less imaginative than Lord Byron, to indulge the fond belief that the great spirit of other times was not utterly quenched in the hearts of her sons. Into the plans, however, more perhaps than into the hopes, of this time, from the poesy, the daring every thing connected with the cause of Italian liberty, Byron rushed with enthusiasm. His palace was a place of council and a place of concealment to the conspirators of Romagna; and to the Neapolitan government he wrote the following address, which was intercepted : "An Englishman, a friend to liberty, having understood that the Neapolitans permit even foreigners to contribute to the good cause, is desirous that they should do him the honour of accepting a thousand louis, which he takes the liberty of offering. Having already, not long since, been an ocular witness of the despotism of the Barbarians in the States occupied by them in Italy, he sees, with the enthusiasm natural to a cultivated man, the generous determination of the Neapolitans to assert their well-won independence. As a member of the English House of Peers, he would be a traitor to the principles which placed the reigning family of England on the throne, if he were not grateful for the noble lesson so lately given both to people and to kings. The offer which he desires to make is small in itself, as must always be that presented from an individual to a nation; but he trusts that it will not be the last they will receive from his countrymen. His distance from the frontier, and the feeling of his personal incapacity to contribute efficaciously to the service of the nation, prevents him from proposing himself as worthy of the lowest commission, for which experience and talent might be requisite. But if, as a mere volunteer, his presence were not a burden to whomsoever he might serve under, he would repair to whatever place the Neapolitan government might point out, there to obey the orders and participate in the dangers of his commanding officer, without any other motive than that of sharing the destiny of a brave nation, defending itself against the self-called Holy Alliance, which but combines the vice of hypocrisy with despotism." I pause upon this address for one moment, for I confess that I cannot help being overpowered by my, not I trust unnatural, feelings of indignation, when I think of the infamy, for infamy it was, with which the world-the mean, base, and cowardly part of the world-had contrived to encompass, as it were in a toil, the name and fame of a man who, stigmatized as the hater of mankind, never displayed a sympathy which was not hostile to the misrulers of mankindwho, at the very moment of which I am speaking, suffering under popular malignity, did not for that abjure and hate the people; and, an exile from his native land, remembered its history and its laws, in taking the side of freedom. True and melancholy was it that he wrote his own destiny, when he said-" The scoundrels who have all along persecuted me will triumph, and when justice is done to me it will be when this hand is as cold as the hearts that have stung me." Even then, however, justice was done to him in Italy; and the best and bravest spirits of that unhappy land, if they did not sympathize with the wrongs, acknowledged the virtues and the energies, of the illustrious sojourner amongst them. "But the Neapolitans betrayed themselves and all the world; and those who would have given their blood for Italy could only give her their tears." The exile of such in the Papal states as had only been watching an opportunity for rising, like that of the hoped-for success of the Neapolitan patriots would have offered, followed as a matter of course, and among these were the Counts Gamba, father and son. The Countess Guiccioli was obliged to accompany her father. The poor of Ravenna, fearing a similar sentence for Lord Byron, at whom indeed the sentence of the Gambas was indirectly levelled, petitioned the Cardinal to procure permission for him to remain: and this was the man whom half the griping parsons of Ireland and England-disputing with an unhappy peasant for his last potatoe called, forsooth! devil, fiend, or any other of those gentle names taught in their peculiar | vocabulary of Christian charity. From Ravenna, about October, 1821, Lord Byron departed, with many mournful presentiments, for Pisa, at which place the Countess and her family were then awaiting him; and in this town he received the intelligence of the death of a natural daughter, born of an English lady, who then resided at Florence. The little girl (named Allegra) died at the convent of Bagna Cavallo, where Lord Byron had placed her for education. For this child he had a strong affection, and at her death he appears to have been deeply affected. The body he sent embalmed to England, with instructions that it should be buried in Harrow church-yard, as near as possible to that spot which was often witness to his schoolboy reveries. There seems to have been a kind of homeless desolation about him at this period, which, conspiring with his love for strange lands, wandering, and adventure, made him turn his thoughts to South America, on which subject he actually wrote, requesting advice, to Mr. Ellice, late Secretary at War. This was the summer of the death of Mr. Shelley, of whom, since his residence at Geneva, Lord Byron had seen a great deal. He was drowned, with a Mr. Williams, in returning from Leghorn to Lerici. The bodies were found and burnt; the spot chosen for the ceremony being thus described : "Before us," says Mr. Trelawny, "was the sea, with islands; behind us the Apennines; beside us a large tract of thick wood, stunted and twisted into fantastic shapes by the sea-breeze." ***** “The weather," continues Mr. Hunt, "was beautifully fine. The Mediterranean, now soft and lucid, kissed the shores as if to make peace with it; the yellow sand and blue sky intensely contrasted with one another : marble mountains touched the air with coolness, and the flame of the fire bore away towards heaven in vigorous amplitude, waving and quivering with a brightness of inconceivable beauty." The death of Mr. Shelley left Lord Byron alone with Mr. Hunt in the Liberal, a publication which he had commenced in common with his deceased friend and that gentleman, having long had the idea of such a scheme, and indeed written to Mr. Moore upon the subject. The Liberal, though it contained Heaven and Earth, and the Vision of Judgment, two of Lord Byron's most remarkable compositions, was unsuccessful, and neither Mr. Hunt nor himself seem to have been much satisfied with their literary companionship. The causes for dissatisfaction on both sides have been given to the public. Mr. Moore calls it "an unworthy alliance," which, in respect to the talents and the principles of the author of Rimini, it was not. Mr. Hunt says, it was an insincere and interested one, with apparently as little reason. At all events, to Lord Byron it was unpopular, and there is no doubt that he wished to get quit of it handsomely, though he resisted with spirit several attempts that were made to induce him to give up Mr. Hunt, immediately after Shelley's demise. It might, perhaps, be in some degree to break off this connection, and to efface the recollection of it, that he turned his thoughts to Greece. But there were also many other causes tempting him to the noble and chivalrous enterprise with which his name is now entwined. The natural bent of his disposition, manifested as a boy, was for scenes of action and contention; and few persons, indeed, have ever contrived to mix, with what would be called a peaceful life, so much of struggling and adventure. But, from the time of his first publication to the day of his death, there seems to have been an impression upon his mind, that this, the active part of his genius, had not, in a literary career, sufficient scope for display. At a moment when troubles were expected in England, he talks of taking an active part in the fray. In his correspondence with Mr. Moore in Italy, he says:-"It may seem odd to you, but I do not think literature my vocation;" and so, when a rising was expected in that country, he was more fully prepared to fight against German domination than perhaps any one over whom it extended, Greece, reviving his early recollections, and at the same time offering all that glory could hope for, in its then inspiring contest-Greece, at that period, and the battles of Greece-had every thing to captivate and influence a poetic mind; while the memorable and oft-repeated assurance, that "Freedom's battle, once begun, And thus bequeath'd from sire to son, called on the Bard to assist in the achievement of his own prophecy. Other thoughts might there also be, more nearly affecting home and his return to that native land, with which he was connected by blood and inseparably linked by fame. The cause of Greece, popular in England, had been adopted with warmth by many public men. The champion of that cause, Lord Byron came before his countrymen in a new and noble character, and might find it no difficult matter-if successful, from admiration,-if unfortunate, from sympathy-to unite around him those popular affections which, in his dark and meteoric career, had been estranged. With all that could excite him to the undertaking, he himself, however, seems to have entered upon it with much foreboding of disaster; and in the last evening that he spent with Lady Blessington, at Genoa, suffered himself to be overpowered by dark and melancholy emotions. "Here," said he, "we are now all together; but when and where shall we meet again? I have a sort of boding that we see each other for the last time; as something tells me I shall never again return from Greece." to us the names of Alexander, Cæsar, and Napoleon, furnishes hardly one solitary example of their theory; nor have they a spiteful consolation in the brief and chivalrous career which our noble Poet entered upon. Landed in Greece, once embarked in her cause, it was impossible for any one to have displayed a sounder judgment, a cooler courage, or a more daring spirit, during circumstances which might have fairly excused a want in either: beset by difficulties of every description,— amidst savage Suliotes, rushing at every moment into his room under the wild impulses of warlike insubordination and legislative quacks, spouting forth their well-intentioned nonsense about a free press and a Benthamite republic,-accused here as a miser, because he reserved his means for objects of utility— attacked there as an oligarch and an aristocrat, because he contended that a government must be strong at home which had to fight against a foreign foe, disappointed in all his darling schemes of distinguishing himself, by the folly or incapacity of those whom he had come to serve,-poked up in a pestilential city, decimated by fever and disturbed by dissensions, he neither allowed himself to be irritated, nor disgusted, nor down-hearted. The only one who showed the least capacity for commanding, he was the only one of Greeks, Germans, or English, who showed the least inclination to obey. While Colonel Stanhope and Mr. Trelawny were leaguing with the Greek chief Ulysses, the Greeks, even in the Greek town in which he was, fighting amongst themselves, his guard actually refusing to march, and his artillery deserting-he himself says:-"As for me, I am willing to do what I am bidden, and to follow my instructions. I neither seek nor shun any thing that I may be wished to attempt. As for personal safety, besides that it ought not to be a consideration, I take it that a man is, on the whole, as safe in one It was in the beginning of April, 1823, that the noble subject of this memoir received a visit from Mr. Blaquiere, then on his road to the Morea. Almost immediately afterwards, he entered into correspondence with the Greek committee, and, in the latter end of July, left Italy to see it no more. Madame Guiccioli remained there. Her brother, Count Gamba, accompanied Lord Byron. His course was first bent to one of the Ionian Islands, whence it was thought he might be able to learn the exact position of affairs before he landed upon the continent. In Cephalonia he staid a considerable time, where he seems to have been principally occupied with the attempt to unravel the intricate politics of the scene he was about to enter upon, and in listening to the orthodox doctrines of a Mr. Kennedy, a very excellent and pious, but rather ill-place as another, and after all he had better end with judging, gentleman, who undertook, very confidently, to convert Lord B. to a full belief in every one of the Thirty-nine Articles, if he would but listen to him twelve hours at a time. Unfortunately, this condition was indispensable. Lord Byron sank, I think, beneath the second hour, otherwise (Dr. Kennedy always said) he would have been converted. a bullet than bark in his body. If we are not taken off with the sword, we are like to march off with an ague in this mud-basket; and to conclude with a very bad pun, to the ear rather than the eye, better martially than marsh-ally. The situation of Missolonghi is not unknown to you. The dykes of Holland, when broken down, are the deserts of Arabia for dryness in comparison." In such a spot and under such circumstances was Lord Byron placed; not, let me say, by a ridiculous enthusiasm, for from first to last he fully understood the difficulties of his situation; but by an honourable desire for enterprise, a carelessness for death in a good cause, a desire, perchance, to be restored to the It was the end of December when Byron reached the coast of the Morea, and putting off again on the 5th of January, after some danger from adverse winds, arrived, in spite of the Turkish fleet blockading its port, at Missolonghi, where he landed amidst the exulting population of the place, who, amidst the mingled din of rejoicing shouts, wild music, and artil-good esteem of his fellow-countrymen, and an ardent lery, conducted him to the house prepared for him. A few dull fools have always been ready to spread the doctrine that there exists some incompatibility between a poetical mind and a practical capacity. Unfortunately for them, history, which has preserved aspiration for the freedom of a celebrated country and a gallant people, long placed under a degrading and intolerable yoke. His first endeavours were to mitigate the savage and atrocious character of the existing contest; and in this, by a well-judged return of some Turkish prisoners, and a letter addressed to Yussuff Pacha, commanding in that district, he succeeded. His next object was to have stormed Lepanto. From this endeavour he was prevented by the insurrection of his troops. He then turned his attention to the formation of a brigade with which he might commence operations in the spring, and to the defence of Missolonghi, for the expense of which, he was willing to have advanced two-thirds of the money required. In the midst of these plans he was seized, on the 15th of February, by a violent fit, which, though it lasted but a short time, seems to have made a deep impression upon his constitution; the pain he suffered during it being, as he himself said, of such an intolerable nature, that, if it had lasted a minute longer, he must have died. From the time of this attack in February, Lord Byron continued weak, nervous, subject to tremors and vertigos, which he no doubt increased by an over spare diet, living wholly on toast, vegetables, and cheese, and restrained from exercise by the bad weather and a report of the plague; so that his only recreation was that of playing with his dog Lion, and going through the exercise of drilling with his officers, an exercise sometimes diversified by a game at singlestick. Under these circumstances, it wanted but a very little to animate the elements of destruction already existing in his constitution. A cold, caught from standing, in a state of violent perspiration, exposed to the rain in an open boat, brought on a fit of fever, accompanied with shiverings and rheumatic pains. "At 8 that evening," says Count Gamba, "I entered his room; he was lying on a sofa restless and melancholy; he said to me, 'I suffer a great deal of pain: I do not care for death, but these agonies I cannot bear.'" The following morning, however, he rode out in the olive woods; but on his return complained of the saddle having been damp. This was the last time he crossed his horse's back. His fever now rapidly increased. On the 12th he kept his bed all day, complaining he could not sleep, and taking no nourishment whatever. The two following days the fever seemed to have diminished, but he had become weaker, and complained of violent pains in the head. On the 14th his physician, Dr. Bruno, urged bleeding, which Lord Byron, however, from some boyish superstition, resolutely resisted. At this time he would have sent for Dr. Thomas at Zante, but a hurricane blowing into the port rendered all communication with that island impossible. On the 16th, alarmed at some hints from Mr. Millingen, that madness, of which he had great fear, might otherwise ensue, he submitted to bleeding ;(1) but, as if to confirm his theory, the fever after the operation only be(1) There are contradictory accounts of the whole of these proceedings, but Mr. Moore's seems the best authenticated. came stronger than before. On the 17th, the bleeding was repeated, but the inflammation on the head hourly increased. On the 18th Lord Byron rose, and attempted to read, but found himself faint, and, tottering back to the room he had quitted, returned to bed. A consultation was then held among such gentlemen of the medical faculty as could be got together, Luca Vaga, Prince Mavrocordato's physician, Dr. Freiber, the medical assistant of Millingen, Dr. Bruno, and Millingen himself; and now, for the first time it appears, Lord Byron was sensible of his extreme danger. Millingen, Fletcher his valet, and Tita, an Italian servant of great fidelity, were standing by his bed, and in tears. The two first, unable to restrain their grief, left the room; the hand of the last was locked in Lord Byron's, so that he could not. "Oh! questa è una bella scena!" said Byron to him, with a faint smile, giving vent even at this moment to his sense of the theatrical, and deriving a kind of amusement from his own death-scene. He then seemed to reflect a moment, and said, "Call Parry!" Delirium immediately ensued, in which he was heard to say-"Forward! courage!" etc. etc., words, it may be remembered, almost similar to those uttered at a similar moment by Napoleon! On recovering from this paroxysm, his approaching fate was still more apparent; and perhaps no deathbed scene was ever more sorrowful or exciting than the one which followed, as, between impatience to be understood, and the impossibility of utterance, poor Byron struggled vainly to make his last thoughts and wishes known to his faithful domestic. "Go to my sister-tell her-go to Lady Byrontell her." Here he became indistinct, but continued muttering with great vehemence for some considerable time. No words were caught, however, except "Augusta," "Hobhouse," "Kinnaird ." "Now," he said at last, "I've told you all." "My Lord," replied Fletcher, "I have not understood a word that your Lordship has been uttering." "Not understood me!" said Lord Byron, in the utmost distress; "what a pity! then it is too late; all is over." "I hope not," answered Fletcher; "but the Lord's will be done!" "Yes, not mine," said Byron. He was then heard to repeat the words, "my sister-my child!" Subsequently he was also heard to say,—“there are things that make the world dear to me; for the rest, I am content to die." He spoke also of Greece-"I have given her my time, my means, my health; and now I give her my life-what could I do more?" At six o'clock on the evening of this day, he said"Now I shall go to sleep;" and, turning round, he fell into a slumber which lasted for twenty-four hours. At a quarter past six o'clock, on the following day (the 19th), he opened his eyes, and shut them again immediately. This was his last sign of life—the physicians felt his pulse-he was no more. On the 22d of April, in the midst of his own brigade, the troops of the government, and the whole population, the most precious portion of his honoured remains was carried to the church where lie the bodies of Marco Botzaris and of General Normann. The coffin was a rude ill-constructed chest of wood; a black mantle served for a pall, and over it were placed a helmet, a sword, and a crown of laurel. But no funereal pomp could have left the impression, or spoken the feelings, of this simple ceremony. The wretchedness and desolation of the place itself, the wild and half-civilized warriors present, their deep-felt unaffected grief, the fond recollections, the disappointed hopes, the anxieties and sad presentiments, which might be read on overy countenance-all contributed to form a scene more truly affecting than perhaps was ever before witnessed round the grave of a great man. The coffin was not closed till the 29th of the month. On the 2d of May the remains of Lord Byron were embarked, under a salute from the guns of the fortress. After a passage of three days, the vessel reached Zante, where Colonel Stanhope shortly afterwards arrived from the Morea, and, as he was on his way back to England, he took charge of Lord Byron's remains, and embarked with them on board the Florida. On the 25th of May she sailed from Zante, and on the 29th of June entered the Downs. John Cam Hobhouse, Esq. and John Hanson, Esq., Lord Byron's executors, claimed the body from the Florida, and it was removed to the house of Sir Edward Knatchbull, Westminster, where it lay in state several days. The interment took place on Friday, July 16th. Lord Byron was buried in the family vault, at the village of Hucknall, eight miles beyond Nottingham, and within two miles of the venerable Abbey of Newstead. He was accompanied to the grave by crowds of persons, eager to show this last testimony of respect to his memory. As in one of his earlier poems he had expressed a wish that his dust might mingle with his mother's, his coffin was placed in the vault next to hers. It bore the following inscription :-" George Gordon Noel Byron, Lord Byron, of Rochdale. Born in London, (1) Jan. 22, 1788, died at Missolonghi, in Western Greece, April 19th, 1824." An urn accompanied the coffin, and on it was inscribed :"Within this urn are deposited the heart, brain, etc. of the deceased Lord Byron."-At the end of this memoir will be found a correct representation of the monument erected in Hucknall church, with the inscription it bears. Such was the termination of Lord Byron's earthly career-the most remarkable poet of his epoch, and one of the most remarkable men that ever lived. Of high birth, a noble fortune (at the time of his death he had his wife's), of extraordinary abilities (1) Mr. Dallas says Dover.-P.E. all of which he was driven by bigotry, calumny, and prejudice, to dedicate to a foreign cause, in which he miserably but magnificently perished. The sensation which his death produced in Greece must have been tremendous, from the recollections of him which, on visiting that country afterwards, I still found there. Its effect in England was hardly less astounding. There was something so boyish, even to the last, in Byron's character,-there was about him of promise, even when he had most perso much formed,-that the idea of his death could, I think, have hardly occurred to any one. the news of it, a much younger enthusiast, came, To me, perhaps, considering I was unacquainted with him personally, with peculiar force. Educated at the same school, and, on coming into life, having become acquainted with some of his best friends,—at that very moment preparing, a youthful follower, to join him in his romantic enterprise,—I remained, with a sense of desolation pressing upon me, almost rooted to the spot where I was standing, when I heard the fatal intelligence. Over England in general I believe, indeed, the blow was felt as a private calamity, notwithstanding the injustice which had driven him from it. The very faults of Byron, which excited the hope and the expectation of amendment, if they had provoked reproaches on his life, enhanced the regrets at his death. Never, however, was death more poetical or more glorious. There are bards whose writings may compete with those of the author of Childe Harold; but there are none over whose personal existence such a spell and such a charm has been thrown. Even in his most beautiful compositions, we think less of the minstrelsy than the minstrel; and this feeling, which it seemed Lord Byron's peculiar destiny to excite during his existence, has been perpetuated by the cause for which he perished, and the spot in which he died. As little has been said, since his leaving Italy, of the lady with whom he had been previously residing, I should observe, that with this lady he kept up an affectionate and continued correspondence; and from some verses, the last and among the most beautiful long governed him, and which, even in what he thought of any he wrote, he refers to the passion that had so his declining years, he still felt, with a poesy and a tenderness that did equal justice to his lady and his muse. I know of few things to say within the short limits still assigned to me, that this narration has not already introduced. As a man, Lord Byron was a person of good imin his life, from boyhood to manhood, tended to depulses and violent passions, which every circumstance velop. As a christian, he performed many of the duties, without feeling strong faith in the creed, of Christ. For this weakness of faith he was attacked with a virulence such as few people, in civilized times, were ever assailed with for their religious |